What can I say. The terminology is dumbfounding, and it contradicts everything I believe in. But I'll give this guy credit for two things: first, he managed to time the market pretty well over the last 10 years. Second, he's pretty honest about the entire venture. From the FAQ:
DOES MARKET TIMING WORK?
Market timing is unproven. That said, every mutual fund salesman you'll meet-- except maybe the Vanguard 500 guy-- would have you believe that his fund manager is a better stock picker than anyone else in the world, and although few like to mention it, good timing is implicit in good picking. On the other side, academia continues to go to great lengths to disprove timing and promote diversified buy-and-hold investing. The controversy, then, is between a group with considerable practical experience, but a vested interest in timing's success (financial professionals who want to sell their expertise), and a group with no practical experience, but also no particular vested interest (academicians). Obviously, the creator of Decision Moose, a financial professional, thinks timing may indeed work, or he wouldn't be wasting his time on a site devoted to benchmarking a timing mechanism to prove its validity.
My main problem with this site is the old Anthropic Principle: our observations influence what we see via a selection bias; we wouldn't see the world as it is if we were not here, watching it. For example, this answers the question of why Earth is in such a perfect position relative to the sun: slightly closer, and temperatures will be too hot. Slightly further away, and it would be too cold. The anthropic principle simply says that if Earth was not in this exact location, we wouldn't be here to wonder about it - it's not a case of exceptional luck (or divine provenance, or intelligent design). Out of a billion planets, only the ones that develop life will wonder how come they happen to live in a planet with the perfect conditions for developing life.
How is this related to market timing?
Imagine a thousand brokers trying to time the market, each with his or her moose site. Every year, half of them will have above average results - by pure luck. The other half will have below average results, realizing they're no good at it and shut down their site.
After 10 years, you'll have on average about 1 moose site that managed to switch allocations consistently well, and beat the market every year. And it will be the only moose site around.
But this doesn't prove that next year it will have more than 50% chance of beating the market.
If you're not convinced, just look at analysts predictions: at any given day, about half will tell you to buy and half will tell you to sell. I don't feel I can trust either one. Half say we're headed to a terrible recession, and half say the worst is behind us. I just can't trust them, or even our dear, honest moose. But if you do, good luck and let's see in another 10 years how you've been doing!
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